consume
I am hungry for more than matter
for energy
for impossibility
give it to me

I want it all
I want you too
albeit
I'll never give myself back to you

It's just a thought,
but maybe this really is
as it seems.

Perhaps
the mountains
are truly mountains,
and the rivers
rivers.
A symphony of liquid,
notes called drops,
but you hear only one song.

It's possible
that light
is color,
because a broken thing
is still
itself.

All of the loose ends
might meet by chance
in a white room
when they find themselves
searching
for the beginning
again,
but
it's just
a thought.

wondering what to do:
he broke my focus like a bone.

I wonder who I am,
who I'm becoming,
and how I used to be.

I thought I was just like him
but some lovers don't know how to stop.

I'm learning:

beginnings:
your name [here]
your pen [in my pocket]

endings:
the word God melts like a spoon
in my hands,
my hands? hotter than the flames of hell.
Suicide:
not mine. I  swear [this time].
this time we're talking about you.
I know you got tired of listening to the other things,
but here's me stripping it all away.
I can only hope you can hear me,
because I'm screaming so loud you could be my mother.

My heart is beating faster than these keys and
you are the power behind the beatings. .

I see the same hope in each person
Painting faces and holding hands
Lying through false teeth
We’re a breed of actors
So encased in your cravings
Your heart will forget to beat
A momentary lapse of routine
And you’ll fight to regain your senses
In the back of your head
You all want the emptiness to win
Because we’re just passing time
Feeding insecurities
Until it’s over
Maybe I’m selfish
Maybe I’m weak
But it's a primal ache
So close but off limits
You all try but I won’t break
You raise this child just to **** it
Ink fills my pores
Forcing me to remember
Your guilty words and painful lectures
Forgetting expression
Brief interactions with perfection
Isolation
Sinking back into a life I’ve lived before
Swiftly slipping into old footprints
I’m not mental
I’m just sick of feeling
But don’t quite give up dear
Because for now I’m still here
At least for tonight
I will sleep by your side
Ill keep on pretending
And you can keep praying
That maybe some day I’ll turn out all right
It becomes more of an instinct as time goes on
Less of a mask
More comfortable than the truth
My palms sweat
And I begin to forget
What brought me here in the first place?
Words are lost to me
I know I have thought
I don’t know what they mean
I need to run but you’re holding my face
Holding me here for as long as you need
I want to be cut open
I want you to see me bleed
You kiss me with amnesia and leave without a trace
I cover my fears with ideas and stories
I want you to notice but you ******* ignore me
That’s why we’re addicted
Medicating our lives
With make believe and lies
Who’s the director?
The church or the people?
Lets hold each other
As the flames climb the steeple

Tracing your face in charcoal
(I can never get the eyes right)

Counting out the melodies
In the whistle of the wind
Rereading wrinkled obituaries
mouth to mouth
lets pass the smoke
And bathe in our amateur poetry.

Feel my spine against your chest
Watch the shadows drift
We don't need a thing.
Try to forget the minutes
I'll listen to you sing

I never learned not to bite my nails
But hell you still smoke cigarettes
And in our bad habits
We found the closest thing to happiness
That I've ever seen.

We always meant to paint your room
But in the end your empty walls
Were somewhat calming

Your know that I've grown fond
Of finding stories in the ceiling
And we'll lay here
until the paint starts peeling

I'm a ghost of a persona.

until the bath water goes cold
watch the day go dark

Letting unanswered questions fall
Onto the stagnant water
Look into my own glazed eyes
In the waving reflection below your neck

I'm cursed to never understand
How you call just one place home

For now lets pretend like I'll never leave
Breathe in the rising steam
Lets never forget this moment

he came to the door one night wet thin beaten and
terrorized
a white cross-eyed tailless cat
I took him in and fed him and he stayed
grew to trust me until a friend drove up the driveway
and ran him over
I took what was left to a vet who said,"not much
chance...give him these pills...his backbone
is crushed, but it was crushed before and somehow
mended, if he lives he'll never walk, look at
these x-rays, he's been shot, look here, the pellets
are still there...also, he once had a tail, somebody
cut it off..."

I took the cat back, it was a hot summer, one of the
hottest in decades, I put him on the bathroom
floor, gave him water and pills, he wouldn't eat, he
wouldn't touch the water, I dipped my finger into it
and wet his mouth and I talked to him, I didn't go any-
where, I put in a lot of bathroom time and talked to
him and gently touched him and he looked back at
me with those pale blue crossed eyes and as the days went
by he made his first move
dragging himself forward by his front legs
(the rear ones wouldn't work)
he made it to the litter box
crawled over and in,
it was like the trumpet of possible victory
blowing in that bathroom and into the city, I
related to that cat-I'd had it bad, not that
bad but bad enough

one morning he got up, stood up, fell back down and
just looked at me.

"you can make it," I said to him.

he kept trying, getting up falling down, finally
he walked a few steps, he was like a drunk, the
rear legs just didn't want to do it and he fell again, rested,
then got up.

you know the rest: now he's better than ever, cross-eyed
almost toothless, but the grace is back, and that look in
his eyes never left...

and now sometimes I'm interviewed, they want to hear about
life and literature and I get drunk and hold up my cross-eyed,
shot, runover de-tailed cat and I say,"look, look
at this!"

but they don't understand, they say something like,"you
say you've been influenced by Celine?"

"no," I hold the cat up,"by what happens, by
things like this, by this, by this!"

I shake the cat, hold him up in
the smoky and drunken light, he's relaxed he knows...

it's then that the interviews end
although I am proud sometimes when I see the pictures
later and there I am and there is the cat and we are photo-
graphed together.

he too knows it's ******* but that somehow it all helps.